Category talk:2009 Works
That was fun. So 2008 is The Man With the Iron Heart, United States of Atlantis, The Valley-Westside War, After the Downfall, and The Breath of God. What about short stories? I didn't start paying those any attention till this year. Turtle Fan 23:01, October 22, 2009 (UTC) :Stumped. We'll have to review the bibliography. TR 00:46, October 23, 2009 (UTC) What's the one in Reincarnations that's being published for the first time? We'll want to put that in this category. Turtle Fan 19:10, October 23, 2009 (UTC) :The one with the word "blue" in the title, I think. TR 19:25, October 23, 2009 (UTC) ::"Bluethroats." Yes, I don't recognize the title. Of course, that's true for all the red links under the Reincarnations section of the biblio except "The Haunted Bicuspid." ::I may give Reincarnations a go. Price is a bit steep but Christmas is coming. I read Departures straight through and got no great joy from it. I read large parts of the other two and got no great joy from them, either. But I think I've come to appreciate the short story as a form in general a bit more since then, and I'm coming to appreciate HT's way of writing it. When I read each of the other three he was still cranking out great novels. Now I get maybe one a year, maybe less, that wows me, and the rest all feel so drawn-out and formulaic, even when I enjoy them, like United States of Atlantis. On the other hand, all the short stories of his I've read in the last two years or so, even the old stuff, have held my interest, as have the three OA novellas. It's like he's taking his novels and boiling the dilution out of it, so that we're left with a strong story, just like the good old days--when most of the novels were thrilling from start to finish and the stories couldn't seem to find room to accomodate everything that went into the long ones. ::If nothing else, R has a gorgeous dustjacket, and if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you can always, always judge a Turtledove book by its cover illustration. Turtle Fan 19:52, October 23, 2009 (UTC) Interesting--We talk of HT's slumping production, but, if these Works By Year categories are all complete, and I do believe they are, then 2009 tied 2004 as the most prolific year of his career by works published. And 2004 includes The First Heroes, for which he wrote only "The Horse of Bronze" (which by itself counts as one of the twelve) and some introductory material, and 3xT, which contained no new material at all. Discount those and he published ten original works in 2004 and 11 (we would of course also have to discount Reincarnations) in 2009, giving it sole possession of first place--no other year has 11 pieces even with reprints of old material and/or anthologies mostly of other peoples' stuff. Of course, six of the 2004 works were novels, as opposed to four of the 2009 works (of which I read three, and of those, two sucked ass). Four novels in a year is a mark he's surpassed many times. Turtle Fan 01:51, January 30, 2010 (UTC)